This doesn't apply exacty to area 51 (although I never asked), but, my Dad, who is now 79 and has been retired for at least 15 or so years, worked
for a company, I don't know if I should say the name of it, but it was a research company.
He was a physisist, and it was a research company for the defense department of the U.S. government. He had a "Top Secret" security clearance. (I
don't know if it was "Above" or not...)ha, ha - smilies aren't working right. Anyway, we didn't get along much for most of my life, not until
about the last 4 years. We then became really close.
Anyway, that part is irrelevant to this post, but what I'm trying to say is that since we didn't get along, I rarely visited him at work, after my
parents divorced, I rarely saw him at all, so I never even attempted to ask him about his work. I didn't care. But last year about, I became very
intersted in all sorts of stuff, like why is Israel so important? Did he know what really happened to JFK? What about the cold war and the arms
race? etc....
Well, he had been retired for about 13 or 14 years by the time I tried to ask him about stuff. And even though now, we talk about just about
everything, he told me that although he no longer worked for the company, being retired and all that he took an oath when he was granted his "Top
Secret" clearance that was a lifelong oath, and that he was never, ever in his lifetime to talk about anything that he had worked on or learned of
that was classified then, even if it has been declassified or partially declassified by now.
He said that classified information when it gets declassified, is never fully declassified in it's entirety. There are always a few details that
never reach the public, and that's the way they want it.
So, I never asked him again. He absolutely will not talk about anything he heard, learned, saw or probably helped to design or anything else while he
carried his Top Secret clearance.
I suppose that the employees of Area 51, and other much more shadowy type government facilities have even much more harsher terms that they agree to
when they take their oath. I suspect that none of them, past or present will ever give you the whole story.
[edit on 3/4/2005 by CyberKat]
[edit on 3/4/2005 by CyberKat]